Pissed off about a Focus magazine cover depicting Venus de Milo (some old Greek actress or something) flipping off the rest of Europe (meaning Germany) and carrying the title “Crooks in the Euro Family”, the Greek Consumer Association has called for the boycott of German goods which nobody in Greece can afford to buy right now anyway.

The Greeks are a little touchy these days because their government/state/civilization is on the verge of bankruptcy or something (like join the club already). The Germans are a little touchy these days because the Germans are always a little touchy.

“The responsibility for stopping the Iranian bomb thus rests with a coalition of the willing. The attitude of Germany—Iran’s most important Western trading partner—will be critical to the success of such a coalition. But while the recent announcement by Siemens and Munich Re to exit the Iranian market have garnered headlines, hundreds of German manufacturers remain determined to continue doing business as usual with Tehran.”

German? Whose idea was that? Keine Ahnung. A language of ideas maybe, but not of very much action.

Anyways, according to man-spricht-Deutsch-Guido Westerwelle, German “is the key to more than 350 German universities and colleges, to Europe’s largest economy. It grants access to German literature, music, philosophy, and science, to the wealth of great European cultural traditions and, not least, it is the key to realizing one’s own goals and ideas.”

That’s true, I guess. Sort of. But let’s be honest, Guido. German is also the key to more than 350 German universities and colleges that nobody wants to attend, it grants access to German literature that nobody wants to read anymore, to German music that, well OK (the old stuff was pretty good) and to German philosophy that’s not much more than high speed mysticism if you ask me (which you’re not). I don’t know what German science is so I’ll just assume that it’s really cool. And if you have to learn German just to know what your own goals and ideas are, then they’re probably not worth knowing in the first place. But maybe that’s just me.

Their thoroughness when it comes to her, I mean. Two-time gold winner German biathlete Magdalena Neuner is mad as hell and isn`t going to take it anymore.

“You really get examined and tested around here all the freakin’ time. Like four or five or six times a day already, or at least I do. And this part about having to get undressed each time like that. I just don’t get it. None of the other ahtlete girls have to do that. The hell with this. I’m outta here.”

The 23-year-old hotshot unexpectedly pulled out of the biathlon team relay competition on Monday.

“That’s right, and the sexagenarian shock rocker’s got a hammer. He calmly smashes out the Plexiglas face part of the spaceman’s helmet. Fruit juice drains out, problem solved.”

Mr. Cooper’s success as a pitchman is doubly surprising because the stringy-haired 62-year-old takes over as Saturn spokesman from a sexy female cyborg who looked like the kind of adolescent-boy fantasy who turns up so often in Mr. Cooper’s songs.

The first movie? The big-budget remake with a message because it wasn’t low-budget enough (the movie, not the message)? History?

Or was this flick, like most of the other films that get shown here every year at the Berlin Film Festival, was it like, well, too political? Nah, that can’t be. What’s more political (or politically correct) than the Berlinale?

I know, maybe it was just another really lousy movie. I mean even by Berlinale standards lousy.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
- Frederic Bastiat

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
- Margaret Thatcher

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Mencken

It is like information theory; it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise. The intelligence agencies call it disinformation. If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone's contact with reality, probably your own included.
- Philip K. Dick

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.
- Jan Fleischhauer

Intellectuals, in the words of the writer Eric Hoffer, "cannot operate at room temperature." They are excited by daring opinions, clever theories, sweeping ideologies, and utopian visions of the kind that caused so much trouble during the 20th century. The kind of reason that expands moral sensibilities comes not from grand intellectual "systems" but from the exercise of logic, clarity, objectivity, and proportionality.
- Steven Pinker

The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature... The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes had attained to being in the classic period.
- William James

A doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Once we understand a thing, it is as if it had originated in us. And, clearly, those who are asked to renounce the self and sacrifice it cannot see eternal certitude in anything which originates in that self.
- Eric Hoffer

It is unrealistic to expect people to see you as you see yourself. If people reach conclusions based on false impressions, they are the ones hurt rather than you, because it is they who are misguided. When someone interprets a true proposition as a false one, the proposition itself isn't hurt; only the person who holds the wrong view is deceived, and thus damaged. Once you clearly understand this, you will be less likely to feel affronted by others, even if they revile you. You can say to yourself, "It seemed so to that person, but that is only his impression."

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